DVD Commentary / Western Animation

• Avatar: The Last Airbender features commentaries for some episodes by the co-creators or other members of the production crew. They often give extra information on the story or the creative process. Or just make farting noises for half the episode.
  • Sometimes their commentary is hilariously inane. For example, from the commentary on The Western Air Temple:
    Mike: Hello once again, this is Mike DiMartino, co-creator and executive producer of Avatar.
    Bryan: And this is Bryan Konietzko, the other...guy.
    Mike: Who does a lot of stuff...Like co-creation.
    Bryan: I usually co-create between like, 9:30 AM and 9:41.
    Mike: And then you're executive producer in the afternoon?
    Bryan: I make executive products between like, 10:01 and 10:14.
    Mike: Wow.
    Bryan: What about you Mike?
    Mike: I take the 2:00 to 3:30 shift on the executive production.
  • There's also Avatar Extras, which gives small blurbs of random trivia about the various things in the show, including inspirations for scenes and scenery, background information for characters that didn't get much in the series, and the occasional snarking.
    Bumi: Welcome to Old People Camp.
    Avatar Extras: Dinner at 4 o' candle and bedtime at 6:30 o' candle.
  • The Legend of Korra continues the tradition of hilarious commentary. For example, they start off Skeletons in the Closet with voice manipulators: Mike, Bryan, and Jeremy Zuckerman (music composer for the show) have squeaky voices like they just sucked in helium, and Ben Wynn (sound designer) has a ridiculously deep voice. It's as hysterical as it sounds.
    • The commentary for The Voice in the Night reveals that Mike and Bryan met Seychelle Gabriel (Asami) at a "windsurfing event" that didn't go so well^note Gabriel also portrayed Princess Yue in the live-action adaptation.
• The commentary for episodes of Family Guy are odd in that series creator and multiple character voice actor Seth MacFarlane uses his normal speaking voice for Brian, a talking dog, so he appears to be doing the commentary in-character. He also flat out refuses to do the voices of any of the characters he voices (Peter, Stewie, Quagmire etc) during said commentary. Usually with (hopefully tongue-in-cheek) threats of violence against whoever suggested it.
  • Only if someone asks; if the fancy strikes him, he'll throw in a line or two in the voice of Peter and Stewie. Although he usually tells them to fuck off in character. Also Seth Green sounds nothing like Chris Griffin or Neil Goldman (his two main voices) so he has to be asked to drop into character. Mike Henry (Cleveland Brown, Herbert) does his voices without being asked.
  • The commentaries featuring Danny Smith meanwhile tend to give an idea of just how insane the people who write the show are. The one for 'Indecent Proposal' in particular has the cast repeatedly accusing him of being extremely drunk while he claims to be 'high on life.'
  • Parodied in the episode "You Can't Handle The Booth" which has the Griffins (which for episodes like these are Animated Actors) provide DVD commentary. This starts off as a normal kind of commentary but once the Griffins receive their paychecks and Lois realises that Peter is being paid more than her for being in the show their story starts to take priority over the story of the episode that is being commentated. Eventually after Lois threatens Peter with divorce and leaving the show Seth MacFarlane enters the booth to reassure them that everything will be fine because they're all fictional characters, which results in the Griffins interacting with their voice actors.
• American Dad! also has loads of commentaries, and often help highlight how this show grew into a different show than Family Guy.
  • The early episode "Bullocks for Stan" spoofs the concept. Klaus narrates a conversation between Stan and Francine, and when asked he says he's pretending he's recording DVD commentary for his life. Near the end of the episode, Klaus' narration pops in at a couple of points where he's not involved, playing with the Animated Actors aspect by mentioning the tragic death of one of their extras and complaining about how Executive Meddling forced them to give Stan a Glurge-filled Out-of-Character Moment to close out the episode.
• The Futurama commentaries are well known for being raucous, free-ranging affairs with the various voice actors cracking jokes and telling funny stories about the show's production. They also often feature the voice actors doing imitations, and when a voice actor does imitations they're really good. The Season 5 DVD set features John DiMaggio and Billy West doing a recurring sketch as Tracy Morgan being interviewed by Jay Leno (Jon DiMaggio's Tracy Morgan impression is disturbingly good).
  • Ones involving John DiMaggio (the voice of Bender) are particularly good, thanks to the actor's obvious huge enjoyment of the show shining through.
  • The show's future was still in question for years, and in the commentary for "Anthology of Interest II", Maurice LaMarche asks "What If? we had a fifth season?"
  • Some of the episodes have bonus commentary tracks focusing on a particular subject; "Jurassic Bark" has one with eight of the show's writers describing the writing process, and "A Farewell to Arms" and "Game of Tones" both have animator commentaries with a group of directors and animators discussing the production process.
  • David X. Cohen, the show's co-creator along with Matt Groening, is also great to listen to because of how utterly One of Us he is.
• The Simpsons animator, producer, and creator Matt Groening has probably recorded more audio commentaries than anyone else alive. He has made sure that EVERY SINGLE episode (up to the end of season 17 anyway, when the DVD boxsets were discontinued) and movie that he has been involved in has a commentary track on the DVD, and he is personally on most of them.
  • Talk Show host and former staff writer Conan O'Brien is on the commentary track of a few of the episodes he wrote like "Marge vs. the Monorail" and "Bart Gets Famous", in which he guest-starred right after getting the gig hosting Late Night.
    • At least one such appearance is in the form of an alternate Easter Egg commentary to an episode he wrote. This was in lieu of an appearance on the 'main' commentary.
  • And of course, The Simpsons Movie also has two commentaries. It also does something rare — the movie actually stops at points so that the commentators don't talk over too much of the action.
  • "The City of New York vs. Homer Simpson" has two tracks, because the writer of the episode, Ian Maxtone-Graham, missed the first recording. As a treat, Dan Castellaneta joins in on track two. A number of season 3 & 4 episodes also have similar Easter Egg commentaries with showrunners Al Jean or Mike Reiss when one of them missed the main recording.
  • Of particular note is "The Cartridge Family", where Mike Scully (then the show's head writer) calls up a man named "John" who we are led to believe is John Swartzwelder (who has credit on this and 58 other episodes), a man who refuses to appear in the commentaries despite his massive contributions to the show. Matt Groening is at first stunned that they were actually able to trap him like this, but at the end of the call "John" denies that he's the real Swartzwelder. To this day it's unknown if this really is the real guy or was just a gag.
  • Most cast members have also joined in commentaries, with Yeardley Smith probably doing the most. Guest stars have also appeared, including Kelsey Grammer, Joe Mantegna, Jon Lovitz, Garry Marshall and Stan Lee.
  • Also notable is "Another Simpsons Clip Show", where they're stuck with almost nothing to talk about, so they instead take viewers through the process of how an episode is created, from beginning to end. This ends with a Funny Moment when after the full elaboration of all the work done by a ton of people, David Mirkin notes that the very final step is when the fans declare it the worst episode ever.
  • In-universe, there's "A Star is Torn", which has this line from Krusty encouraging an audience to get an audition over with fast:
    Krusty: After this, I gotta record twenty-seven seasons of DVD commentaries. And I remember nothing!
  • Truly nerdy fans of the show may have picked up on several running themes and gags over the course of the commentaries. For example, John Swartzwelder's refusal to make an appearance is talked about on a number of occasions, as well as the Tube Bar tapes being the inspiration for Bart's prank calls to Moe, and the various censorship fights that the show has had.
• South Park DVDs have had notorious luck with this: the season one set infamously had its full-length commentary tracks pulled prior days before the physical production of the sets were to begin, all because then-distributor Warner Bros. got pissed off at Trey Parker and Matt Stone for explaining their hatred for the film Contact and Robert Zemeckis.^note The commentaries were released as a separate five-CD set that could be bought from Comedy Central's website, and were later included when Paramount released the season on Blu-ray. Season two lacked commentaries and by the time they returned for season three, Parker and Stone had gotten jaded on the concept of doing commentaries and opted to just do "mini-commentaries" that last for only a few minutes at start of each episode, that only briefly scratches the surface of each episode.
  • This is not to say that the mini commentaries are uninformative or boring, however. Trey and Matt later defended the commentaries' short length, claiming that, while they enjoy doing them, the ever-shortening production time for each episode and lack of second-guessing during which leaves very little to actually talk about.
  • Parker and Stone pissing off their corporate masters was lampshaded, in the special edition DVD of "Imaginationland", as far as them exploiting the fact that everything they say that Comedy Central might consider to cause liability will in effect be bleeped out, to great comedic effect.
    • The two have also repeatedly claimed that they quite enjoy doing commentaries and often look forward to completing a season just so they can record them. The most extreme example of this being "Pee", which wasn't even finished when the commentary was being recorded.
• The Venture Bros. commentaries are notably surreal: the two creators are recorded at drastically different volumes and often talk about things that have nothing to do with the episode. This is remedied (the volume thing, at least) in the second season DVD, though. In both cases, though, many, many hints about the next season are dropped.
  • They repeatedly spoiled the ending of Season 3, claiming that nobody listens to the DVD commentary before watching the entire season. They got a signed photo from a fan who did just that at a convention.
  • On the season 4 DVD they claim there commentary for Hansom Ransom is the worst commentary ever because the episode stops working and they cant get it to play again.
• For the Fairly Odd Parents Made-for-TV Movie Abra-Catastrophe, the commentary is done by Cosmo and Wanda.
• The DVD commentary for Invader Zim features several members of the cast and production team, including Jhonen Vasquez himself, and even including musician Kevin Manthei on a few bonus commentaries that feature him and Jhonen exclusively. Their commentaries are riotously funny and as crazy as you'd expect from some of the people they feature.
  • Some episodes have multiple commentary tracks (where one is with the music/storyboarding crew and the other is with the actors), but one episode has an alternate commentary track that is nothing but squealing pigs.
  • The commentary is also severely censored in a large number of the episodes. People (usually Jhonen) will be talking, then the commentary track will spontaneously cut in the middle of a sentence for some stretch of time, then resume in the middle of a completely different sentence or at the end of a joke. The most obvious example of this is during Invasion of the Idiot Dog Brain wherein somebody asks Jhonen what he thinks of the merchandising for the show and you start to hear an answer before the audio is cut for at least a minute before resuming. In one interview, Rikki Simons postulated that the reason for the censorship was just good old-fashioned hatred on Nickelodeon's part.
• One Drawn Together DVD has a commentary track for an episode which isn't too odd. What is odd is the inclusion of the "potentially annoying" commentary track about the original commentary track.
  • There's also the commentary they did for an episode where they brought in a total stranger from off the street and asked him about the episode as he watched it.
  • In the Drawn Together movie, when the characters are trapped in a flooding room with no idea how to escape, Foxxy turns on the DVD commentary and listens until the creators talk about how they wrote themselves out of this one.
• Toys R Us included a free bonus disc with their copies of the Phineas and Ferb Christmas Vacation! DVD. The bonus DVD features the Phineas and Ferb episode "The Chronicles of Meap" with two audio commentaries, one by the creators, and the other by the characters they voice, in which we learn that Major Monogram considers Meap to be terrifying) and Dr. Doofenshmirtz does not approve of Ferb's crush on Vanessa.
  • The DVD release of Phineas and Ferb The Movie: Across the 2nd Dimension includes the series episode "Attack of the 50-Foot Sister" with this same treatment.
• Sealab 2021's DVD commentaries are particularly insane (much like the show). Of note is that the commentary over several episodes has no bearing on the episode itself. The highlight of this is the commentary over two episodes merely being one of the writers reading a comic book he did for a 4th grade project.
  • Another notable commentary was the "Commentary of Hatred" in which a blogger named Karl Olson rips apart the episode "Tornado Shanks" (widely viewed as the beginning of the show's Seasonal Rot).
• The Ren & Stimpy Show commentaries are interesting, considering John Kricfalusi appears on commentaries for episodes that were done after he was fired.
  Eddie Fitzgerald: I was just wondering how this cartoon would've been done if you were handling it...
  John K: I would have put some jokes in it.
• Batman: The Animated Series has several great ones from the producers, detailing their intentions to make it more than what was considered possible for Saturday morning cartoons to be at the time. They're also perfectly willing to poke fun at their work the few times it deserves it, like the difficulties in animating the Batmobile driving on hills, or the Magical Security Cam in "Heart of Ice". While the commentaries are usually reserved for what are considered the best or most significant episodes in the series, there's a commentary for the much-derided episode "Critters".
• Shout! Factory's Amazon exclusive My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic: Season One 4-DVD set has audio commentaries on the episodes "Friendship is Magic, part 1", "Friendship is Magic, part 2", "Winter Wrap Up", "Suited For Success", "The Show Stoppers", and "The Best Night Ever", including people like Hasbro executives Brian Lenard and Robert Fewkes, supervising directors Jayson Thiessen and James "Wootie" Wootton, art director Ridd Sorensen, composer Daniel Ingram, and voice cast members such as Tabitha St. Germain, Andrea Libman, Cathy Weseluck, and Nicole Oliver.
• DVD commentary for The Critic would usually feature the how's creators, and at least one or two of the voice actors (save for Jon Lovitz himself who was working on a film at the time), and very often during the commentary, they would get caught up in the show and end up laughing at quite a few of their own gags.
• Oedipus in my Inventory contains a parody advertisement for a Collector's Edition, which promises this among other perks.
• Commentary tracks for Adventure Time are of course extremely short, and tend to break down into one of two types: A fairly serious track with the writer/writers and director talking about the plot; or a track featuring creator Pen Ward with actors Jeremy Shada, John DiMaggio and Tom Kenny, which while nominally informative, is usually filled with the four joking with each other and riffing on some of the show's insanity.
• Perhaps the strangest ever recorded was for the 2003 Star Wars: Clone Wars shorts by Genndy Tartakovsky, a rambling and timid affair clearly ad-libbed in the most disastrous manner possible. The results were so bad that a separate "Hyperspace Commentary" (which seems to translate to simply "Commentary that doesn't suck") was included on the DVD and there Genndy holds his own okay, but why the first track was included as well continues to mystify.
• Home Movies features commentary on a few episodes of their DVDs. One of the more bizarre ones being for the season 3 episode, "It's Time to Pay the Price", which begins with Brendon Small and H. Jon Benjamin doing an improvised jam session, and it doesn't stop until around halfway through the episode!
• On the Foster's Home for Imaginary Friends Season 1 DVD exists a one episode commentary where Frankie Mac the rest of the gang and Bloo riff on the episode "Store Wars", bash the practices of dvd commentaries and try to discover the actual truth that happened that day ending in Bloo successfully convincing everyone else to pulverize Madame Foster so he doesn't get in trouble.
• The complete season boxsets for Beast Wars feature commentaries from various cast and crew members. They give trivia about the show’s production, crack jokes (usually at their own expense), and discuss the thought-processes behind the show’s writing. There’s a great bit where Garry Chalk’s phone goes off during the commentary; the second he leaves the room to answer it, Alec Willows and Scott McNeil immediately start making fun of him and insinuating that his mom is calling to check on him.
• The DVD commentary for the six episodes of Clerks: The Animated Series was recorded in one long session, with conversations continuing from episode to episode, and sounds like one long audio documentary on how to be Screwed by the Network.
• The DVD set of The Perils of Penelope Pitstop includes commentary tracks on "Jungle Jeopardy" and "The Treacherous Movie Lot Plot". Janet Waldo, the voice of Penelope, participates in the commentaries.